Enigma
by Tales-of-a-Sloth
Summary: "Belle watched as the figure whirled around in a start and made a mad grab for its scarf. Only then did she realize it was, in fact, not an "it," but a "he.""   Modern AU.


It was a stark August morning in the suburban town of Belmont, IL. It was not cold, nor not chilly. You could not even describe as nippy. Simply stark. It was the kind of morning where you step outside and you suddenly find yourself uncomfortably awake.

A thin blanket of snow was draped loosely over the neighborhoods, parks, and shopping centers. A little early in the year for a snowfall, but it was only a light powdering shower. Easy enough to scoop out of the driveway, and not nearly sticky enough to make into a snowman or even a decent snowball fight.

With August came fall, and with fall came the ticking time bomb that was the last few days of summer vacation freedom.

"Well, it was certainly nice while it lasted."

The young man, wrapped all in tartan and thick black wool, exhaled a long drag of nicotine and smog. He sat listlessly from his perch on top of the tall brick wall, a Marlboro tucked between his gloved fingers.

"I was hoping to have had more summer romances this season."

The young man in the tartan took another drag of his cigarette and exhaled. "I swear Jean, you make love like a fish drink water."

The young romantic in question, barely a year the tartan boy's junior, smirked emphatically.

"Are you suggesting I am nothing more than an addict, good sir? That all I'll ever need is love?" said Jean-Luc, dramatically feigning hurt, "That the sweet, sweet love of a lady fair is my drug? My love is my own ecstasy? That I need its potent nectar to survive? I that what you are saying, my dear confidante?"

"I'm suggesting that you need a new hobby."

"Hmph," The tall and lanky boy huffed, leaning back against the rusty red wall, "And you need more culture."

The tartan boy, who shall remain nameless, could only roll his eyes.

"You're starting to sound like Wordsworth."

The non-nameless youth known as Jean, short for Jean-Luc, refused to respond. He preferred not to be compared to his stiff, snippy accountant uncle thank you very much, but often found it better not to egg his brooder of a friend on like this any further—whether Jean-Luc was the one to start the argument or not. His friend sounded like he as in another one of his moods. But then again, his friend was _always_ in one of his moods. Sometimes there was just nothing to be done about it.

As for Jean-Luc's comrade, he contented himself with the silence. What a summer it had been indeed. Another three months of nothing. Not non-delightfully so, and it was not like he, nor any of the other students within the district for that matter, were particularly happy with wasting their young lives away with homework and magazine gossip. However, this young man was actually quite fine and dandy with returning to school. Summer had been far too long for his liking. Far too long and far too quiet. And it was his last year before graduation, his last year to still be considered a child by legal standards. It was both frustrating and relieving. College prep was going to be a hassle though. Oh well.

With one last inhale of his cigarette, the nameless tartan boy crushed the filter against the sole of his boot and stared up at the grey and overcast sky, seeing nothing in the unsaturated grey puffs of condensation, and wondering what in the world he was doing here.

* * *

The young woman looked as best she could through the frosted window, large Times New Roman numbers printed across the translucent glass, unable to make out a single thing. It was as if she were back at the university, the first day of class, preparing to hear her first lecture on whatever the teachers believed or did not believe she could absorb. Only this hall she was about to enter would not nearly be as extravagant, not filled with rows upon rows of chestnut brown tables lined up at an overwhelming incline, reaching to the clouds and smelling of lemon disinfectant. Rather, it was be a flat, white room, filled with used and gum-infested desks, not reaching for anything aside from another pencil. The only similar aspect was going to be the lemon disinfectant.

This was high school after all.

She only prayed her students thought differently.

Feeling incredibly out of place and ironic, the flustered and fair lady tucked a forever misbehaving strand of hair behind her ear and pushed the door open, half expecting a rabid hyena to come and eat her face. But this was no place for wild animals. Far worse, this was where rabid teenagers roamed. If only she'd owned a tranquilizer gun.

But one look at the inside of the immaculately clean and empty classroom quickly reminded her how foolish she as being. This was not the jungle, for Pete's sake, this was Belmont High School. She had no time to get her head in a tizzy over dealing with angsting pre-adults; there were preparations to be done. The first day of school was only a few days away after all, and Ms. Isabelle Marchant was nothing if not the proud owner of ironclad work ethic. And work ethic always began with preparation.

With a fair amount of ease, the newly hired AP and Honors Literature teacher hauled her armload of boos and papers and posters and many other classroom essentials to her surprisingly small desk. She bit back a swear as several copies of Charles Dickens tumbled onto the linoleum floors. She sighed.

Never one to be discouraged, even when it came to the well-being of her prized _Oliver Twist_, Isabelle—or, as her father had always affectionately called her, Belle—hauled up the fallen literature, praying he spines weren't too bent out of shape, and got herself to work. She arranged jaunty pictures of living and talking apples chatting about the wonders of reading with equally animated pencils and chalkboard erasers, tacky but otherwise entertaining inspirational posters, and an assortment of enlarged photos of famous works of literature, both works required for the students to read as well as books she enjoyed. It was tedious work, taping them all up, and she was certain that they would all be flaking off the wall by the end of the semester. But they brought a little more color into the otherwise monochromatic classroom, and when dealing with a lot of easily bored teenagers, that was _never_ a bad thing.

Wiping a bit of imaginary dust from her hand-knit sweater—a good-luck gift from her father, who Belle had never known could and still did not believe he could knit, but she had a great love for her father and wore it anyway— she set to work on the hard part; organizing the books her students would need, but their names, alphabetically. And she had four different classes, three of which were APs. She could feel the headache already.

Luckily, she'd made a list of all those taking her classes, a nice mixture of overachieving sophomores, steady-paced juniors, and the odd senior or two, all of them spread out not-so-neatly in all four time periods. Belle may have found herself in over her head many times, but she was tactical and practical.

Humming to herself, she spread out all of the books on the shelves provided—all of them painted white, of course—thankful they were all covered in plastic wrap, for they were all paper-backs. Class A and Class B, filled to the brim with eager sophomores looking for good AP credits and several juniors who were there simply by proxy, had _The Aeneid_, _A Tale of Two Cities_, _Agnes of God_, and _The Canterbury Tales_. Class C was strictly honors, mostly consisting of juniors and seniors who either felt they were intellectually inadequate for the AP course, or they just did not wish to try as hard. It was assigned the tumbling _Oliver Twist_, a good wake-up call of _Candide_ and _The Crucible_, and _Don Quixote_. And finally was Class D, upperclassman AP. Only the really dedicated or suicidal would have chosen this class, which would explain why it only consisted of ten students total. At first it had shocked Belle to learn that such a large high school— the last graduating class consisting of one hundred and twenty-eight students— could possibly have such a small number of students. But in the end, she had chosen not to argue with the principle when he had informed her of such. It was her job to enlighten the students, not herself.

Belle found herself sighing.

She was suddenly not interested in stacking books anymore.

Setting down a portion of Class D's stack, she ambled around the empty class room, running her slender hands over the flat surfaces, feeling a small nagging in the back of her mind. She knew that she was simply overreacting about all of this just because it was new. She knew she was a smart woman, that she could easily handle this new job. She'd spent most of her college days raising her tuition by tutoring men and women her own age, some older. She had a degree in Education and a minor in Psychology as well as English. She had excellent people skills, and she loved children. But most of all, she was young. Well, at least relatively so, compared to all of the middle-aged or older men and women who worked here. She would be able to relate all of the kids here a bit better than some of the teachers, and help them more because of it.

And she was teaching _literature_ for goodness sakes, at one of the best high schools in Illinois. This was her dream job. What she'd always wanted to do.

She should have been okay with this. She should have been happy. And she was.

...But.

She stared out the window, hugging her arms and trying to take comfort in how the outside of the school looked exactly like the inside, pristine and white. She hugged her arms. It didn't really help.

A shock of dark coloring caught her eye.

She turned and focused on a figure sitting—slouching was more like it— outside, on top of the school's brick fence. It was hard to tell whether the figure was a boy or a girl, because its back was to the school and it was donned in several layers of thick, dark clothing. The only thing discernable about it was its shock of short, light hair sticking out from under a black snowcap and a black and white plaid scarf around its neck, gently billowing in the outside wind.

Belle did not think much of it at first. School was not yet in session, but the school was still public property, and that went for the fence surrounding it. People could come and go as they please before the school year started. So long as they weren't trying to break it or steal anything, and this figure seemed as harmless as harmless could get, at least from behind.

But before she could even begin to wonder why on earth someone would want to loiter around outside of a school building in the cold of August, the wind appeared to suddenly pick up outside, and the plaid scarf blew up sharply, clear off the figure's neck, and into Belmont High School's vast, snow-covered courtyard.

Belle watched as the figure whirled around in a start and made a mad grab for its scarf. Only then did she realize it was, in fact, not an "it," but a "he."

* * *

A curse flew from his lips as the long piece of cloth and tassels flew off in the wind. He tried to get it before it could blow away, but it mockingly rose higher on another updraft and was carried into the snow below. And that was his favorite scarf, damn it.

"Urgh."

"Trouble in paradise, my friend?" said Jean.

"Of all days for the weatherman to be right," mumbled the boy, the wind cutting against his now bare neck. He cursed again, "Wait here. Be right back."

He did not wait for Jean-Luc's reply, be it a protest or otherwise, and hopped down the length of the wall. He landed gracelessly on his rump, but the snow cushioned his fall and there was no one to see him. He swore again, not out of pain, but simply for the sake of swearing. He was having a frustrating day, and spouting obscenities at nothing was less dangerous than trying to punch something. Or someone. Like what happened the last time.

He found his scarf not too far from where he'd landed. With a thankful grumble to any God who was listening, he stumbled over in the thin layer of snow and crunching dead grass, and picked it up.

It was only until he stood back up his full height that he realized he was being watched by a stranger.

And it would not be until long while later that he would look back on this day and realize he had been staring right back.

This stranger was a she, there was no doubt about that. She, the stranger, was standing in one of the windows of the old English room. Why, he had no idea and he had not enough sense to wonder about it. She was tall, but not too tall. And not petite, but not necessarily round or curvy either. She was evened out, almost pear-shaped, and had short brown hair—he'd wanted to say chocolate brown, but the glass was too crusted with condensation to tell clearly—with full bangs that kept trying to fall into her face. She was wearing one of the most ridiculous-looking sweaters he had ever seen— white all over and with little yellow ducks an hearts knitted along the mid-section, a collar that had been knitted entirely wrong, and one sleeve that was longer than the other—and pair of dark blue tights underneath it. A wise decision in the stark chill, but otherwise a completely unorthodox decision in the ways of fashion. But he wasn't paying attention to any of that.

He was far too busy staring at her large, dark-brown eyes.

He barely even noticed as the stark cold of an August morning in Belmont, IL continued to bite at, nip at, and uncomfortably wake up his still-visible neck.

* * *

Beauty and the Beast © Disney and all that applies

Side Note: Beta Readers would be most welcome if any are available. Love and roses and such.


End file.
